San Francisco-based DroneDeploy, the world’s leading commercial drone software company, announced today that its customers have safely conducted more than 1 million automated drone flights around the world. This milestone was made possible by 4,000+ DroneDeploy customers as aerial data powered smarter workflows in industries as diverse as construction, agriculture, energy, and emergency management.

DroneDeploy’s software platform makes drone data accessible and useful across all industries, improving site communications, planning, and operations. It has helped customers map more than 40 million acres across 180 countries.

“2018 was the most successful year for DroneDeploy and the entire commercial drone industry,” said Mike Winn, CEO of DroneDeploy, “We are proud to have helped our customers conduct more than 1 million flights and are setting our sights even higher in 2019.”

This success comes after onboarding dozens of leading construction companies in 2018. Construction makes up the fastest-growing sector for commercial drone adoption, having surged 250% in the last year alone. DroneDeploy now serves hundreds of top-ranked contractors including Brasfield and Gorrie, Jacobs, Layton Construction, McCarthy Building Companies, Skanska, and Sundt Construction.

The growth is in large part due to the falling cost of commercial drone hardware and massive software innovations that drive measurable value for companies using drones to gather aerial information. This overall trend is contributing to the digitalization of the job site as builders adapt to increasingly data-driven workflows in the wake of greater competition and higher building costs. Drones save time, improve project management, and eliminate hazardous manual labor— and AI and machine learning take it even further with automatic object recognition, counting, and reporting.

With further regulatory changes expected from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2019, the drone industry is set for another year of extraordinary growth. The FAA forecasts 3X growth by 2021, with an estimated 230,000 drones hitting the skies in 2019 as regulations ease the burden for the industry to collect aerial data at scale.